Trends in a society take time to develop. There may be fluctuations immediately, but if the numbers that Bill Baldwin offered are correct, it will take a long time for the dictatorship of Chavez to disarm the people. Of course, that will do nothing about machete murders, for example.

My prediction is that Venezuela is going the way of Cuba, only with plenty of oil to finance its stupidity.

After doing some reading, this may not have an impact at all. It seems that in 2010 there were about 25,000 firearm permits but 10 million firearms in Venezuela. Unless each permit holder owns about 400 firearms, something is amiss. I guess gun registration and permitting doesn't prevent people from getting guns without government permission.

Also, I couldn't find that gun's were actually banned, just the sale to civilians. However, there is this quote "Hugo Chavez's government says the ultimate aim is to disarm all civilians..."

Chavez has taken on the role of thorn in our side now that Fidel Castro is fading away. Venezuela is blessed with the advantage of oil, magnifying Chavez's voice all the more. But how you can see his rule as any kind of good is beyond me. Nothing good will come out of this, unless the Venezuelans decide that they've had enough.

You ought to open your eyes, Greg. You're still buying that bullshit about the US being good and our detractors being bad. It's not that simple. Some of these piss-pot countries hate the US for good reason.

Hating the United States isn't a foreign policy. Venezuela is going down the road that Cuba has been on for decades. I'm not buying any bullshit. I'm looking at the facts. You're just pleased because yet another country is taking away more rights from its citizens. What you don't realize is that we're never going to allow America to go the way of these dictatorships.